


untitled

by Rush_That_Speaks



Category: Bound (1996)
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rush_That_Speaks/pseuds/Rush_That_Speaks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every happy family is happy in its own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	untitled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Xochiquetzl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xochiquetzl/gifts).



> Originally written for Xochiquetzl for Yuletide 2008. ... and transferred to AO3 in, uh, January 2013.

They spend a couple of days thinking about the money. What to do with it, what not to do with it, how to keep a low profile-- but no nonsense about going halves with it: every single dollar belongs to both of them, and they both know it without saying a word.

Europe? says Corky, thinking of James Bond movies, picturing Violet on the Riviera in a floral-print bikini with her painted toenails crusted in warm white sand and salt and a drink coordinated to match her lipstick. Mafia, says Violet. Other places... and Corky isn't upset when she sees Violet in front of the Forbidden City, wearing something slinky-new and silk and carrying an honest-to-fuck cigarette holder, black gloves up to the elbow and legs up to the Promised Land. Corky's in a business suit like the one she wore for her felon-on-vacation pastiche passport photo, and the lockpicks in her ears glitter in all the after-dark neon.

Mumbai, Singapore, Kyoto: places they didn't offer the rich little girls trips to at the high school Corky avoided like the plague before she dropped out of it, places not sewn in the tags of the silk scarves and lace underwear that hit the carpet in the bedrooms of the prom queens and cheerleaders. Places that smell like the perfumes they slathered to try to hide the smell of honest desire when they threw Corky out of their houses at two-thirty in the morning.

Violet smells like cunt and face powder and whatever she's been eating, and more and more often like Corky and sex and motor oil and house paint. Violet owned five bottles of expensive perfume, one per anniversary, and threw them out the apartment window when she was packing. Then she went down and jumped around in the shattered smelly mess, coughing and whooping in the reek and somehow staying upright on her six-inch stilettos among the crunching.

Corky and Violet trade clothes, one day in Tokyo, trailing through the streets where no one knows them, the too-pretty lipsticked boy-in-a-suit and the tomboy uncertain how to manage a skirt that short. Corky hasn't worn a skirt since she was eleven and small enough for her mother to physically wrestle her into one. She puts her foot down about the panties and is glad of it later when Violet pulls the skirt infinitesimally up and snakes a hand down into her Y-fronts in the booth of a quite respectable restaurant. The two of them laughing hysterically at one another's bad drag.

Corky buys Violet an insanely expensive antique kimono. Violet buys Corky a disturbingly expensive top-of-the-line Honda motorcycle. In the sleeve pocket of the kimono is a platinum ring with an extremely large blue diamond setting. Clipped to the keyring of the motorcycle is a plain white gold band with an engraving of violets running around the inside. They each wear the rings, third finger, left hand, and neither ever says a word about it.

They get tired of being the tallest people for twenty blocks in all directions and of not speaking English. There's an obvious place in the States, and they head for it, buy a fixer-upper Victorian somewhere vaguely near Russian Hill and fix it up, detailing and gingerbread and gorgeously authentic wallpaper and two Siamese cats on red velvet cushions in the parlor. A golden retriever who sits under Corky's workbench. Somewhere in there Violet becomes addicted to home repair and they keep on doing it, hiring out, because no matter how rich you are you have to do something with your time besides the bars in the evenings and the freewheeling motorcycle rides into Marin County.

They take risks and learn tricks of the trade. It's fun and there are no financial worries. Corky can always steal something else if they lose big-time. They paint and paper and spackle and smash holes in walls and Violet builds subtle muscles that don't show from any distance.

Corky wonders if she's ever going to get itchy, if she's ever going to find herself wanting late nights outside the walls of banks and the twist of wire in the mouth of a lock. If she's ever going to regret other people's privacies. But she's never hit it really big before, never been more than living from hand-to-mouth, never not had to split a too-small pot over drawings and blueprints for the next idea. Never had anything to lose before. Never had Violet.

She keeps wearing her lockpicks, to remind her.

Violet shrugs and says that she meant it when she said she wanted out. Ruffles Corky's hair and bites her earlobe (the other one) and goes back to caulking something.

They wake up one morning and discover they're the most respected interior design team in San Francisco, and they can't stop laughing for a week.

They wake up one morning two years after that and discover that there are two point one seven six million dollars in their joint family checking account, and every single penny of it earned honestly. After that, they think they will never stop laughing.

And indeed, they never do.


End file.
